Review Summary: Where were you when the Digital Frontier collapsed in on itself?
Illinois, Avant-Garde, Rocker Eichin Schmeichin is one of those surprising acts that always manages to confuse and amaze. Surprising even more is in how truly good and ambitious his sixth record,
Senioritis, is. Continuing his evolution into a more centralized sound with longer tracks,
Senioritis boasts an ambitious set of instruments and a heavy resemblance to the work of experimental bands like Neutral Milk Hotel.
Like most of his songs,
Senioritis's tracks have almost zero coherency of rhythm or tone. They are mostly designed to be jarring, or relaxing (sometimes both). Tracks like
Days are Through emphasize that off-putting feeling with a random blast of mic feedback in the middle of an acoustic section. Other times he goes down a more simple route, with
It Means the World being mostly an acoustic section with odd random trumpet noises and synth pops now and then.
She Sells Seashells is a piano driven track that drifts from cut down snippets of a piano piece, to adding symphonic echoes halfway down the track.
Eichin Schmeichin's lyrics have always been out of this realm in terms of coherent thought. Take this piece from
What Are the Animals Thinking？ as a prime example of this:
On my way....I discovered
ten tired terracotta soldiers
huddled 'round a portable DVD player
watching "Casablanca" over and over...
Not to mention the acoustic section of the track is completely off rhythm and, towards the end, his pumps up his mic feedback to the tenth degree while adding an orchestral section because why the Hell not？
Senioritis Theme doesn't even have any singing, just random conversations among some people at a party. It gets weirder because, halfway through the song, his busts out a ghostly violin swirl with random other instruments and pieces like choral singing, harmonicas, and some weird synths. Of all the influences on this record
Goodbye Forever, Poinsettias is almost clearly influenced by The Beach Boys. It features a beautiful echo piece with heavy orchestral instrumentation, and a maniacal sense of beauty in its progression. While he mostly uses his own instruments, he also takes time to add a bunch of random things that he describes in his description of the record:
"My sister's middle school orchestra, the high school choir, the Schnitzel Platz restaurant's polka band, a mariachi group on the radio, and my church's Good Friday service also appear sporadically throughout."
Senioritis is one of the weirdest, most incoherent, collection of sounds forming music I have heard in a long time. It's as if this album is just a collection of wavering thoughts and dreams, jumping from piece to piece in a matter of seconds. To us, the dreams are realistically very short; but to him, these probably last hours. It's amazing to listen to, even if it doesn't make sense. The most endearing thing about this album is in that the album plays together like one uniformed piece, causing the listener to feel as if they are missing something if they skip tracks. It is a certain union that is severely lacking in many records nowadays. Of course, people not into that scene of Experimental Rock will find this entire record off-putting, but those who choose to stay and listen, will find a whole new world open up to them.
